Failed Seduction

I wanted to post on another topic today, since I've been in a sort of psychic meltdown since last Tuesday.

You see, I overestimated my persuasiveness. I thought I could convince 18 year olds to give up their free time to interview with me. I had very high hopes friends.

Instead: no dice. Two contacted me back. The rest are maintaining radio silence. I've contacted them three times, which to me constitutes on-the-edge-of-coercion. I am reminded of Thomas Newkirk's "Seduction and Betrayal in Qualitative Research." Sharon Miller addresses this same phenomena in "Lessons from Tony: Betrayal and Trust in Teacher Research." Miller asks, "But how far should we go to capture the data that we think we need?" Do we betray our students? Miller did. I think I could have certainly continued to seduce these women into participating in my project: more money, fewer interviews, a revised personality that reads more like a peer, less like the Assistant Director of Composition.

But this project is to be my first, and I can't stomach the psychological resistance. I can't stomach countering this resistance. I refuse to chase and coerce and woo and seduce and reward and possibly betray. My stance is from an ethics point, but it's also logistical. There's just not time to that convincing.

So I'm back to a proverbial square one. I've started my background reading for my new project on writing instructors who self-identify as working class or blue collar. Specifically, I'll be looking at graduate students (as opposed to lecturers or professors) because graduate school is the place where we're taught to be professionals, where we're led to construct our persona as a representative of the academy. So I'm reading Villanueva, Mike Rose, Giroux, Bordieu, collections of working-class academic autobiographies, Ira Shor, Alison Jagger. But I'd like to write up my experience with the failed project as my reflection piece this semester, especially as it relates to positioning and reflexivity. I think that's the kind of artifact I need (and is one that has the potential to turn into a co-authored article one day!).

That Sharon Miller article is here: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/149. Newkirk is in Mortensen and Kirsch, Ethics and Representation in Qualitative Studies of Literacy (which I'll have to recall soon if you have it. Let me know!).